There was a statement alleged to have come from Vladimir Putin regarding Bergoglio. I cannot for the life of me figure out if the news is fake or whether it is real.

I came to the piece through Fr. Zuhlsdorf's site. In the piece we found the following (emphases from his site):

President Putin has slammed Pope Francis for “pushing a political ideology instead of running a church”, and warned that the leader of the Catholic Church “is not a man of God.”

“Pope Francis is using his platform to push a dangerous far-left political ideology on vulnerable people around the world, people who trust him because of his position,” Putin said.

“If you look at what he (the Pope) says it’s clear that he is not a man of God. At least not the Christian God. Not the God of the Bible,” Putin said at the Naval Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Kronstadt.

“He dreams of a world government and a global communist system of repression.

“As we have seen before in communist states, this system is not compatible with Christianity.”

The charges made against Bergoglio are certainly true, but the tone is certainly not that of Vladimir Putin, who is the most diplomatic statesman around. He is very cautious in his statements and I fail to even see why he would bother taking time from his busy efforts rebuilding Russia to criticise a man who is busy destroying the Catholic Church, of which he is not a member (the 'which' refers to Putin here but since heretics cannot be members of the Church...). I just don't see Putin making these statements, and at a cathedral no less.

Mind you, I would certainly not respect him less if he said it!

The truth is that Bergoglio's attack hounds have been critical of Putin so it would be only fair of Putin to point out that Bergoglio is not a man of God and that he is deceiving people. I just don't think that Vladimir Putin said it, because I have not seen any confirmation of this piece from trustworthy newspapers or blogs, and even Fr. Zuhlsdorf seems to think it is fake news.

There were many comments on this piece at the website, but one in particular was noteworthy:

Fake news or not (I think it is largely invented), Pope Francis is to blame for having said things that make people wonder if articles like this are true. What this article says would not be remotely plausible if it pertained to either of our previous two popes. Not so with Pope Francis. Even if Putin never said what the article says he says, it is plausible that he did say those things and it is also plausible that there is some element of truth to at least some of them.

The truth is the more absurd a story coming from the Vatican nowadays the more likely that it is true, and the more anti-Catholic it is the less we can dismiss it. Even Bergoglio's defenders cannot pretend that the man is not a disaster for the Catholic Church.

The same priest writes about the 'North Korean' situatoin and suggests some solutions. There was only one contributor who wrote anything worthy of a Catholic response, while the rest showed off their americanism. As it turns out, he is British, and seemed generally to be the most informed. One of his responses captures his general attitude towards the 'problem', and he had many.

Simples. Don’t threaten North Korea. Don’t put THAAD missiles in South Korea. Don’t carry out massive battle manoeuvres in the south. In fact go back home and look after your own people.

I have a novel idea: Just leave North Korea alone!

My idea runs roughly along the same sentiments in other words. The fact is that most other countries have come to terms with the fact that North Korea is a nuclear power, including all of its neighbours, which are well within the range of North Korean weapons. It is only the U.S. which thinks it is so special that it has a right to prevent another country from defending itself.

North Korean concerns are not exactly unjustified, as the U.S. has been on a global campaign to take down anyone who opposes its policies and not strong enough for self-defence. We have seen Iraq, Libya and Syria attacked militarily by the U.S. and on top of that you can add other countries the U.S. has bombed int the recent past on multiple continents. As a sovereign country, North Korea have every right to defend themselves or at the very least to assure the destruction of anybody who attacks them, adn contrary to popular opinion, it is the U.S. which is the aggressor as it keeps holding military drills - some with such ominous names as "Operation Decapitation" - and imposing sanctions on what is already one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Truth is, sanctions are considered an act of war.

It is time for the U.S. to stop acting as if it is special - and being allowed to get away with it - and live with the rest of the international community as part of the community, and not as an overlord. It is the U.S. which is the real rogue state!

There is simply no good reason why anybody should accept the ridiculous notion that the U.S. has a right not to be under threat from other countries, given that it threatens virtually all countries on the planet. Furthermore, there is nothing irrational about the behaviour of North Korea: They simply seek the survival of their nation, as do most right-thinking people (which obviously excludes most of the Western politicians and electorate at this point in time). I would hope that at least Catholics can agree that it is unjust to threaten a country with annihilation simply for seeking the means to preserve itself,...